America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (Galaxy Books)

Rating:
Summary: A big capitalist conspiracy
Review: In "America by Design", David Noble argues that the rise of technology is synonymous with the rise of corporate capitalism in America. Focusing on the period roughly between the 1880s and the end of the 1920s, the book examines how the discoveries of science began to be systematically applied by the "useful arts" of manufacturing for the purpose of increasing productivity and profits. This birth of technology began the process of a gradual change in America as the early corporate capitalists attempted to establish 20th century routine along lines that would satisfy the needs of the new "science-based" industries. As Noble chronicles the activities of these men (including Henry Pritchett, Hollis Godfrey, Frank Vanderlip, and Charles Steinmetz among others), I felt like he considered the history of American technology to be nothing more than a capitalist conspiracy to gain dominance of American society. Interestingly, however, Noble tells the reader at the outset that having a "consciousness of purpose" as these men had is not the same as a conspiracy. He unfortunately failed to explain why.

Noble tells us that technology is not the driving force behind social change. Rather, technology merely offers the possibilities that are available; it is up to society to determine which of those possibilities are necessary for its own development. In this regard, a major theme of this book is the emergence of the engineer - that specialist who was able to reconcile the possibilities offered by science with the needs of corporate capitalism. The book describes the early efforts of these engineers to professionalize their status so that they could gain a monopoly over technological knowledge. As a result, from the beginning, progress in technology took on a distinctively corporate appearance. Unlike other professionals such as doctors and lawyers, however, the engineer was a "corporate animal" who did not have a professional identity beyond the corporation that employed him. Noble describes the uncertainties experienced by these early engineers as they attempted to find their new identity in American society.

As the first generation of science-trained engineers climbed the corporate ladder into the ranks of management, management itself took on a scientific appearance. The book describes the evolution of modern management with its emphasis upon using psychology and the other social sciences to control the behavior of the worker. It was at this stage that the engineer turned from "the engineering of materials" to "the engineering of men".

All in all, "America by Design" offers the reader a lot to think about. I will say that some parts of the book were a bit confusing to read, primarily because of the "alphabet soup" of councils, committees, associations, and societies that David Noble threw in to chronicle the organizing activities of the corporate reformers. Despite this, however, the book was still an eye-opener. I learned that a lot of things that I used to take for granted in our society were actually deliberate creations of men who had a "consciousness of purpose".